WBD682 Audio Transcription
Bitcoin Will Always Change with Junseth
Release date: Wednesday 12th July
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Junseth. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Junseth is an OG Bitcoiner and the former co-host of Bitcoin Uncensored. In this wide ranging interview, we discuss Bitcoin volatility and it’s repetitive cycles, the ossification of the Bitcoin protocol and the current state of development, Bitcoin anonymity and privacy, the profitability of mining, and Bitcoin’s future as an alternative to traditional money in a world of global collapse.
“All the value in these other chains all of the value in all these businesses and everything else surrounding ‘crypto’ generally, it’s nonexistent, it’s going to disappear; and I guess it enures to our benefit in that all of that value flows back into our project…it just takes so long.”
— Junseth
Interview Transcription
Junseth: Yeah, oh, there we go, yeah, that's better. It's the best sound checks in the business, Danny.
[Junseth singing]
Junseth: I tried some fancy shit at the end, it didn't work out.
Danny Knowles: You really did, you went big.
Junseth: No, it didn't go good.
Peter McCormack: Should we do a duet?
Junseth: Sure.
Danny Knowles: I want to hear a duet.
Peter McCormack: Let's do, what's that Frozen song with the --
Connor McCormack: Let It Go?
Peter McCormack: No, the other one with the man and the woman?
Junseth: You have Klaus Schwab on your leg?
Peter McCormack: That's Jiddu Krishnamurti. Oh, you knew that?
Junseth: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Fuck off!
Junseth: I was like, is that Klaus Schwab?
Peter McCormack: I wish I could sing. Honestly, of all the talents, play a music instrument, speak a foreign language, any, I wish I could sing.
Junseth: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I am fucking terrible.
Junseth: I wasn't so good at the end there.
Peter McCormack: I sing a lot in the car.
Junseth: Do you?
Peter McCormack: Loudly, badly.
Junseth: That's all -- I mean, we're just doing sound checks here, so like, these are all --
Danny Knowles: We're rolling now, this is it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know that, I'm just saying, like, can we do that, it sounds like sound checks?
Peter McCormack: The louder I turn it up, the better I get.
Junseth: Yeah? Oh, so the more you hear the radio.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's like, "I'm pretty good". Then I turn it down and I'm like, "No, I'm fucking terrible". I am bit. What do you think Con?
Connor McCormack: You should do Eye of the Tiger, or something like that!
Peter McCormack: I'm not doing Eye of the Tiger! Oh, man.
Junseth: "Tiger!"
Peter McCormack: Even that, you to do better than me. I was once in a rap band.
Junseth: You did a rap band?
Peter McCormack: I was in a hip-hop band called The Mad Cowboyz.
Junseth: The Mad Cowboyz? Oh, that's cute because you're English. You know what I forgot? Can you go into my car and grab the green glasses?
Peter McCormack: Cowboyz with a "z", right.
Junseth: It's messy in the front, but it's on the right side under the sandwich wrapper thingy.
Peter McCormack: Cowboyz with a "z", we were Cowboyz.
Junseth: That's maybe worse, I don't know!
Danny Knowles: It's definitely worse!
Peter McCormack: I was only 8 years old.
Junseth: I like The Mad Cow Boys, is there a space between "Cow" and "Boys"?
Peter McCormack: No, Cowboyz.
Junseth: Was mad cow a really big fear for you back in the day?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: It was a thing, and I don't think it was a fear that we would get it as humans.
Danny Knowles: No, it was. When I was growing up, I remember people were like --
Junseth: Did you avoid McDonald's?
Danny Knowles: People didn't eat beef for years.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, they culled a lot of cows. I don't remember thinking I'm going to get it.
Danny Knowles: It never got to humans, did it?
Peter McCormack: I can't remember.
Junseth: I think it did a couple times.
Danny Knowles: Did it?
Peter McCormack: Hello, lady.
Junseth: We brought the dog today. Can you actually turn my monitor up even more a little bit?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Junseth: I like hearing myself.
Peter McCormack: I like hearing you.
Junseth: Well, thank you, Peter.
Peter McCormack: I miss you when I don't see you.
Junseth: It's been a while. No, that's not long, actually.
Peter McCormack: I thought it was New York.
Junseth: It was like two weeks ago, or a month.
Danny Knowles: And we saw you three days ago.
Junseth: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but before then it was --
Junseth: I feel like, "It's been a while" is like a good fake greeting.
Peter McCormack: It feels like it's been a while.
Junseth: You had quite the run in New York. You had some interesting interviews, the GBTC one.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the Sonnenshein one.
Junseth: Yeah, that's made some waves.
Peter McCormack: He unfollowed the What Bitcoin Did account after that.
Junseth: Well, I don't know.
Peter McCormack: I think he was disappointed how that came out.
Junseth: So you're not an investor in GBTC?
Peter McCormack: No, I'm not. No, God.
Junseth: If you haven't seen that, you've got to see that. That's me promoting your show, on your show.
Peter McCormack: Are you an investor in GBTC?
Junseth: Yeah, I like GBTC.
Peter McCormack: Oh, God!
Danny Knowles: But did you start investing after all the shit happened?
Junseth: Well, I did after it all went negative NAV, which to me, it didn't make any sense. Like, when it was positive NAV, I would buy Bitcoin, and then once it went negative NAV, I was like, "Great, I'm buying Bitcoin now on discount as far as I'm concerned", presuming nothing stupid happens, like they don't get hacked or lose the coins.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Well, I've got a feeling there's more to come out on this story.
Junseth: Do you?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I do.
Junseth: I think the only worry that I would have is if they have obligations, the coins are obligated somewhere else somehow.
Peter McCormack: Well, that would be my number two fear if I held GBTC. My number one fear would be, do they have the coins, all the coins?
Junseth: I'm fairly certain they have all the coins, but I think that the custodial aspect in Bitcoin, "not your keys, not your coins", I think it applies to all things. So, for me it's a trade, it's not a recommendation I make to anybody. But for me, it's a risk I'm willing to take on the discount to NAV that's occurred.
Peter McCormack: I think it's time for them to start doing the right thing here.
Junseth: Well, I think my disappointment in your interview is that you didn't push them on fees, because to me, that's where the crime is. That's so stupid that they have those absurd fees on that thing. It's just a trust. IAU, which is a gold trust, has, I don't know, 0.5% fee or something like that, or 0.25% fee, it's real low. There's no reason that a Bitcoin fee has to be, what, 4%, or whatever the hell they charge.
Peter McCormack: No, and we wanted to get to fees, but after I said what I thought about his position, I disagreed with his position, he was trying to wrap up. Danny was doing this, because I think his PR lady wanted it over. So, we just got to a point where it just had to end, and I didn't get to fees.
Junseth: So you got to wrap up. Fees would have been less inflammatory, I think, to deal with than accusing him of fraud!
Peter McCormack: I don't think I accused him of fraud. I think what I said was I didn't believe him.
Junseth: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And then it came out afterwards, somebody sent me the, I think was it the loan agreement with Genesis?
Danny Knowles: Where he'd signed, the signature.
Peter McCormack: He was a signatory to it. So it was kind of like, there were some people pissed off on YouTube, said I was too harsh, I didn't have any evidence. And then it came out, and I put it on Twitter, they're like, "Oh, now you're sucker-punching him, why didn't you show it in the interview?" I didn't get it until after the interview. But it is what it is.
Junseth: Were you just operating on instinct for that interview?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so what happened was we did a lot of prep, but the things about something like GBTC, there's a lot to understand, and there's a lot to try and unpick and really it needs an investigation not an interview, an actual investigation. And so, all I said to Danny in advance, I said, "We'll just talk him through it and the only thing I'm prepared to do is if I don't believe him, I'm going to say to him I don't believe him", I said that in advance. I said, "If I think he's lying to us, I'm going to say it". And the reason I considered that beforehand was because it was a PR company reached out and asked to do the interview. So I'm like, well, there's a fire on the ship and you send in the fire brigade.
Anyway, so we did the interview and then offered him a beer to settle him, relax him, and just let him know that we're not the enemy, and I had no intention of it being that way. And then just on instinct in the interview, I asked him the first question, I can't remember what it was, a bit of his background, and then started to -- rather than other people telling me what to ask him about, I thought I'll ask you about how this thing runs, how this operates, and then I can ask questions on it. But what happened is, he was basically telling me everything he did in the company, all the things he'd been involved in. And when we got to the end bit where he talked about what he knew and what he didn't know, I didn't believe him. So, it felt like I hit him with a throat punch at the end.
Junseth: Yeah, it was interesting because for me, that interview seemed like an optics thing. To me, I'm really not that concerned with GBTC. I think a lot of the stuff you brought up about the loan agreements, I think that for the most part, in my opinion, he's being pretty honest, that he's not super-involved in the process of who's getting them and such. But I think optics-wise, I think that you are probably sort of hitting on the optics problem that GBTC has more than anything, which you're not a lawyer and I'm not a lawyer, and you and I don't look at that loan agreement the same, but I can see exactly how you get out of that loan agreement what you got out of that loan agreement, if that makes sense.
So I think for me, GBTC's got an optics problem. And David of Bitcoin Magazine has been kind of leading the GBTC shareholder uprising, I guess. He was saying that, I heard him on a podcast, I think it might have been your podcast, he was talking about how he's heard rumblings that they're not even going to convert for a year or two after the SEC allows them to convert, if that's a possibility, to eke out more of those sweet, sweet fees. So, I mean if that's true, that's pretty crappy of them given their stance. But I also don't know if it is true, but I think optically they have a problem.
Peter McCormack: Massively have a problem.
Junseth: Oh, yeah. And it's not going to go away until they convert, which in my case, if I'm right, that there's not that much to be worried about, I'm going to make a massive killing on this trade, right? But if other people are right, and that these optic problems actually translate into real-world problems, then it could kill my trade.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I don't know how all the different bits relate and where the clawbacks are, if they are. I mean, we just had the announcement this week that DCG did not pay back its loan to Genesis, which was what, $630 million?
Danny Knowles: Something like that, yeah.
Peter McCormack: And so, these interconnections between DCG, Genesis, Grayscale, it feels like a bit of a mess and I don't think we all know exactly what's going on. The only thing that is obvious is that some of it feels a little bit, I'm going to want to be careful with my words, but some of it just feels a little bit shady or a little bit irresponsible.
Junseth: Well, like I said, it's an optics problem right now. Right now it's just an optics problem. And the day it becomes more than that will vindicate or not vindicate that interview, you know what I mean? That interview I think is important because I think it stands as a moment where that's how a lot of the investors seem to feel. And I don't know, it's hard to know whether those fears are rational or not until something falls, right? And with Gox, with all of these exchanges, we've had the same sort of thing. The investors felt a certain way, the depositors felt a certain way, some of them felt that it was going to collapse, so they pulled their money out; others didn't, so they kept their money in, they believed the rhetoric. And then it collapsed, vindicating everyone who thought one way, right?
So, that's how this always goes in Bitcoin. People make their calls, Roger Ver goes in and goes, "It's a very stable company. So, I went and I've checked the deposits and I put my dipstick in it and pulled it out and it's filled with oil", and then it went belly up.
Peter McCormack: Were you guys operating Bitcoin Uncensored when that happened?
Junseth: Yeah, I think it was after. No, it was after. We started Bitcoin Uncensored after, because I remember Gox collapsed, the price collapsed. Pre-Bitcoin Uncensored, we were once -- there was this conference in Disney called Disney Bitcoin, or something like that, Bitcoin in the Magic Kingdom, or something like that, I don't remember. But it was a great conference. Antonopoulos was there, Bruce Fenton was there, I was there, David Mondris got married on the blockchain there to his already Filipino wife, a Filipinist. And it was just a blast.
I remember that week because it was post the price degrade, but it wasn't like where we weren't all the way at the bottom yet, and it was still kind of like, remember how last year at the conference, it was still kind of coming down but it felt like it might still be a bull market? That was the position that we were in there. Coins in the Kingdom, that was what it was called.
Peter McCormack: Coins in the Kingdom, I like that.
Junseth: It would be a better name for a Saudi Arabian conference.
Peter McCormack: And during that, because we weren't really around during the Mt. Gox time, I wasn't really involved in Bitcoin, I barely knew what happened. I found out about it a lot more after when we started the podcast. People talked about it a lot, you heard about it a lot. Having gone through what's happening this last year with LUNA, Three Arrows, FTX, does it feel similar or was it completely different?
Junseth: It's always the same.
Peter McCormack: Oh, it's the same?
Junseth: Remember that, I was in California, shirtless, with one of those VR goggles on in your show, and I think I called out LUNA specifically, or these stablecoins, I called out the de-peggings. I gave credit to Brad Mills, obviously, who had been talking about it a long time, but I was saying that these de-peggings are imminent. And it was obvious. A lot of this is obvious, all of this stuff is obvious, things are going up, everyone feels good about it. And what do they say when the tides go out, "You see who's swimming naked". And that's what happens in Bitcoin every time.
It's really hard to remember that when things are going up, they do come down. It's really hard because I think all of us are looking for the ever pump. We're waiting for that day when Bitcoin keeps going up and then it just keeps going up. And I think all the shit coiners feel the same way. They feel like when that happens, their coin will also just continue to rise. And I'm not Nostradamus, I don't see necessarily it's coming. But I am clearly a maximalist. I believe that Bitcoin is the only coin here that matters, everything else will eventually fail. I don't know on what timescape that occurs in, but everything, I think, will. And as it goes up, things come down. And I don't know that there will ever be an ever pump, but I think that every bitcoiner wants that because they want an excuse not to sell when the price is going up. They want to feel like they're the smart ones at the end of this, even though at the end of all of these, the market collapses, and we all have a lot more wealth than we started with, but a lot less than if we'd sold at the top and then bought back at the bottom!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean it's always a challenge. But the only difference is, my understanding of Mt. Gox was, at the time it felt like this was an existential crisis for Bitcoin. Whereas right now, it's like, "Okay, it's just another exchange, we'll get past it".
Junseth: But if you hear if you hear the rhetoric around it, everyone believes all of these are existential crises. So, after Gox, I remember hearing. "It's going to be ten years before anybody trusts Bitcoin again", and I was like, "If you say so", and then a couple years later it pumps. And then the ICO bubble happens, and it all collapses and everything is a scam, obviously, because they were selling like time machines and it collapses, and I hear it again, "Everyone's -- it's going to be ten years before anyone trusts this entire industry", and then a couple years later it pumps. And then the tides go out and FTX collapses and LUNA collapses and SafeMoon collapses and Doge collapses and everything collapses, and then what do I hear all of these smart money? "It's going to be ten years before anyone trusts us again".
You know what will happen in two years, it'll all be back and PayPal is going to get back in, or whoever, like all the companies that abandoned Bitcoin because no one buys anything in Bitcoin, they're going to come back in and announce that they're re-implementing Bitcoin and no one's going to buy it again, anything in Bitcoin on their site. This is just -- everything is the same all the time. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, where every day I wake up and it's just like, "What version of four years ago is today?" And it's just again and again and again. Every four years for me has been the exact same, just Bitcoin becomes a little higher at the end every time.
Peter McCormack: This is Rizzo. Rizzo is a cycle maximalist, he told us last time. It's like, "I'm a cycle maximalist. It's all going to play out the same --"
Junseth: Always does.
Peter McCormack: "-- every four years, the same again". I was like, "No, this time it's different".
Junseth: It's always different.
Peter McCormack: And I know why it's different, but fuck's sake.
Junseth: There's a great book out about that, called This Time It's Different. It's shiller! Talks about how national debts, all countries default eventually, I think is what that one is.
Peter McCormack: Anyway, how was the Conference for you, man?
Junseth: It was good. Same as usual. It's a bear market conference. I've heard a lot of shitcoiners gloating at how few people there were. I could have told everybody that this would be a smaller conference, I mean everybody knows that.
Peter McCormack: There were still a lot of people there.
Junseth: Yeah, there was a lot of booths, a lot of people, a lot of art. It was very bear market conference-y. I went shooting with Jameson Lopp the other day. I invited everyone to go, but only Jameson came and a couple, or I guess a good close Bitcoin friend locally. I didn't invite you, Peter, because I've heard you're very bad with guns. I heard about an incident!
Peter McCormack: Don't talk about that.
Junseth: You actually specifically didn't invite Peter.
Danny Knowles: Junseth invited me and said, "Don't tell Peter"!
Peter McCormack: Is that true?
Danny Knowles: Yeah!
Junseth: Yeah!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so there was an incident but we will talk about that later. That was my inexperience with guns. So the first time I shot a gun was with James Lopp.
Junseth: Yeah, I know.
Peter McCormack: Did he tell you about it?
Junseth: He didn't. You told me about it.
Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah.
Junseth: Jameson and I have done it two years now in a row, where we go trap shooting down here.
Peter McCormack: I can't believe you didn't tell me.
Danny Knowles: We were in interviews.
Junseth: We can't do it, you can't go, you'll shoot people!
Peter McCormack: Well, then you could have told me. No, I won't shoot people. I might shoot a plane, but I won't shoot people. I'm coming this year, fuck that.
Junseth: All right, I'll prepare.
Peter McCormack: I thought it was a great conference. Bear in mind, so 2019 was my favourite one in San Francisco.
Junseth: What I think was great this year was the side stage. The main stage sucked. I don't know if you spoke. Did you speak on the main stage?
Peter McCormack: I MCd one afternoon and I did one fireside chat.
Junseth: First of all, the main stage was heinous. It was like, you couldn't talk, you were hearing yourself. All the good content this year was on the side stage.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. But the thing is, I don't tend to watch any of the conversations or the chats when I'm there, because I get to do it as a job all day, every day. I speak to every one of these people and have them. What I find out is who tells me what the good ones are afterwards, and I watch afterwards. So I definitely, definitely want to watch the one with RFK, because I haven't watched that, yeah, I've got that lined up. So I get to go and use the conference differently. I get to go and hang out and see the booths, talk to people.
Junseth: I tend to think of the conferences as I think most bitcoiners do, this is kind of the Bitcoin tradition. It's funny, because these are industry conferences now. So, you have these industry players who come and are trying to sell things, which is funny to us, because there's really nothing here to sell. This is just finance, right? So ultimately, the only thing that Bitcoin really needs are financial products. I think you've seen the AnchorWatch stuff and everything else that's kind of taken off. Those are the things I think that Bitcoin needs. Those are the only things that matter in the long term.
But bitcoiners use conferences to go see each other. We've known each other for long times, and it's just a way for us to gather in a place and see people we haven't seen in a long time. So, I get to go to the conference, I get to say hi to Adam Back. And I get to say hello to people that I haven't seen in two, three years, sometimes one year, because it's once a year we touch base. But it's just nice, because it's a central place for all of us to gather and meet.
This is cash money that we're dealing with, and we're all sort of here watching it become cash money. It's not quite cash money yet, but we're watching it become this thing that we dreamed of it becoming. And it's kind of a little bit awkward for us to have like cash money clubs of sorts. Like, go start a meetup group for the dollar. It just wouldn't be that. But because everyone has been laughing at Bitcoin and we've all developed sort of this entrenchment identity with it, we're all kind of, probably because of trauma, just seeking out company with people that we've known for a while who've been influential in the space and who have moved mountains here to make sure that Bitcoin gets where it needs to go.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think it's that one time a year where everyone can get together and hang out. It's not about the conference itself, it's about everyone being in the same city. You can go to whatever parties you want, or you can go for a beer with whoever you want, you can catch up, you can go shoot a gun with whoever you want. Just get to spend a week with a bunch of people who are your friends, people you want to see.
Junseth: They're not doing that in Florida next year though, that makes me sad.
Peter McCormack: No, they're going to Nashville. I'm kind of happy about that. I think Miami's a scam.
Junseth: We all know that! We all know that down here.
Peter McCormack: So, Miami increasingly scams you, like Bitcoin increasingly goes up in value.
Junseth: They should just do it in Fort Lauderdale. Go up north a little ways, it's a better city.
Peter McCormack: Well, he just said, "Who wants to see Kid Rock host the after-party?" I'm like, I'm in Nashville.
Junseth: Okay, I like Nashville better now.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, let's go to Nashville, I'm in! I'm going to ask to rap with Kid Rock.
Junseth: Well, I'll go to Nashville, hang out with Kid Rock, drink our Budweisers, our Bud Lights.
Peter McCormack: Our Budweisers. Shoot some guns.
Junseth: Shoot some guns at the Budweisers.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I think it'll be cool. Nashville will be very, very cool.
Junseth: As much as I like Nashville, I do like it being like out my back door. That's been the advantage for me every year of this stuff.
Peter McCormack: You'll be there.
Junseth: I'll obviously be there, but I still am sad about it.
Peter McCormack: I can't believe how many people who didn't go are bitching about it. It's like, "You weren't there. Why are you moaning?"
Junseth: Who's doing that?
Peter McCormack: Just moany people.
Junseth: I think the funniest thing was the viral moment with the two ladies that thought there were cameras everywhere in their Airbnb. I don't know if everyone saw this.
Danny Knowles: Oh, I saw this!
Junseth: Yeah. I don't want to mention their names for fear of embarrassing them, but that was for me the highlight of the week.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you know what, in fairness, I can imagine as a woman, that is a big fear. You don't want to go into an Airbnb and find out there's cameras. I mean, they could be here. I think it's different for men, but I think they do have this kind of fear over things like that.
Junseth: What are you talking about? I go in, like, do you see this body?
Peter McCormack: You get the body out all the time, man.
Junseth: What's that?
Peter McCormack: You get that body out all the time.
Junseth: Yeah, but maybe I do it in front of cameras that I know are there.
Peter McCormack: In your safe place!
Junseth: In my safe place, on your show.
Peter McCormack: Did you get a wizard outfit?
Junseth: No, I think I might -- I completely forgot to do this. I was going to come on your show as a wizard.
Peter McCormack: Okay!
Junseth: I was going to come on as the ossification wizard. There's been all this discussion of ossification in Bitcoin and I wanted to have the discussion. I can't believe I forgot to do this. I think I've decided I'm going to start going around as the ossification wizard and just declare Bitcoin ossified.
Peter McCormack: I mean, it's not ossified until it's ossified.
Junseth: It's never going to be ossified, that's not how code works. This whole ossification movement is hilarious to me, and I keep hearing people repeat the rhetoric of ossification. I'm not a programmer but it takes me two-and-a-half seconds to figure out that ossification isn't a real idea in Bitcoin, it never will be.
Peter McCormack: No. Saylor brought it up in our interview and I didn't pull him up on it, I should have actually, but he's talked about it.
Junseth: He's new.
Peter McCormack: Well, I think there's a different reason. I think if you're holding $3 billion of Bitcoin and you see something like Taproot leading to Ordinals, there are these unknown consequences of big changes, big upgrades that just happen.
Junseth: But ordinals don't break the chain though.
Peter McCormack: No, forget that. The point being is, it was an unknown consequence. So, if there's another big change, could there be an unknown consequence? So, I think for someone like Saylor, the idea of ossification, thinking that, "Bitcoin works now, I don't need it to change", I think it's a different appeal for him. Whereas, for someone who's got $100 of Bitcoin, they don't really care. And so, I spoke to Jameson about it; Jameson's very clear that we're not ready to ossify.
Junseth: Did he tell you about my wizard outfit?
Peter McCormack: No.
Junseth: Damn, because that was the guy I pitched it to.
Peter McCormack: You should have come on as a wizard.
Junseth: I forgot, I completely forgot to do it! But yeah, the ossification discussion is really interesting for me, because everyone's weighing in. And, you might be right about Saylor and his huge numbers of Bitcoin, and his desire to have it just fixed the way it is, but I don't think so. I think the ossification discussion, for most people, is a means of being on the right side of history. Everyone wants to make predictions in Bitcoin and seem like they were on the right side of things later. I was always in support of that. I think Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin was a really good example of that. Everyone wanted to make sure that they were on the right side, that they declared the right things. Then years later, if you weren't, we see the consequences of it, right? And there's people that navigated that really well. I think like Marshall Long, who started on the wrong side and has since come on to the right side. And I think the community really likes him.
Peter McCormack: I like Marshall.
Junseth: Yeah, Marshall's a wonderful guy.
Peter McCormack: He's a great guy.
Junseth: We used to endlessly make fun of him on Bitcoin Uncensored, particularly during that entire fiasco. But he's come around and I think he really is an honest broker and a good person. So, I like him. And if he does something untoward, like robs a bank or rapes somebody, then I'd withdraw that, but I don't think he will.
Peter McCormack: Wences was the same, he was on the wrong side of that. And he said, "Yeah, I got it wrong, I'm sorry", etc.
Junseth: I think there's a way to navigate it, like those people did it. But I think everyone wants to be on the right side at the outset, and I think that's why people are getting on the ossification train. It doesn't make any sense. Who's ever heard of ossified code? It's a bad idea. Elements of Bitcoin ossify. The 21 million cap, I think you could call ossified. There's a lot of things in Bitcoin that are sort of just ossified, if you will.
Peter McCormack: Well, by nature of not making changes, we're not going to ossify the code, we're just not going to do anything with it.
Junseth: It's going to become more and more stable, we'll have less and less bugs, and as that occurs, it will be changed less and less often. And I think there's a few important things that need to happen in Bitcoin; probably one hard fork at some point here in the future.
Peter McCormack: For what reason?
Junseth: Luke Dashjr tells me it's for timestamps. I don't know.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Junseth: So, whatever. I tend to trust whatever Luke says.
Peter McCormack: If Luke can't soft fork it, it can't be soft forked.
Junseth: That's what I think, and maybe he'll figure out a creative way to do that, I don't know. And then I think I'm of the opinion that the sidechain promise needs to be figured out. I think like drivechain is probably a good solution for that.
Peter McCormack: I get a mix of feedback on that one.
Junseth: It doesn't matter. We need either drivechain, or something like it. But that's what I've been saying; something like it is totally fine, but we need we need to have some kind of sidechain option that is decentralised. And to me, those are two very important things: whatever we need to do to fix the base layer, get all of the things into a hard fork if we have to; and then I think that the drivechain stuff is probably somewhat important.
Peter McCormack: I was talking about this with my son in the pool the other day. He was asking me about Bitcoin, had a lot of deep questions about it. So, we were talking about how it works and talking about soft forks and hard forks. And I was saying to him, I think was there one hard fork in the history of Bitcoin?
Junseth: Yeah, kind of. There was an inflation bug.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's what I told him.
Junseth: It's hard to call it a hard fork, given how few people there were, and that was kind of the understood premise that this was like beta software. And I don't know that the fix doesn't work with old versions of the software. It might.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it was an inflation bug, it was discovered, it was responsibly disclosed.
Junseth: But even if it hadn't, it was so early on. It was one of those things, like Bitcoin really has been an experimental thing. It's like lightning right now, people are getting into lightning. I got into Lightning, I opened a node, started it up. In some channels now, I have about $2,000 locked and stuck, and I have no idea how to get them out. It's a beta programme, I knew that when I got in it. It's not ready, none of this stuff is ready, Bitcoin wasn't ready at that time. It's a little different than now when there's like billions of dollars on it and in it, and corporations have money in it and people have their life savings in it, etc, etc. It's a very different thing than putting, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 on Lightning as a test.
Peter McCormack: Isn't it amazing how few things have actually gone wrong on the basechain?
Junseth: Yeah, it shows you the competency, I think, of the dev team, not that we have a specific dev team, right? I think that a lot of these chains are very much like someone will start by hiring someone to basically build the project that they dream of. Bitcoin's not like that. It's a volunteer chain, and all of these devs, if they want money, they've got to go find their own grants and they have to find their own source of income. It's a very hard job and taking it can be very lucrative in the long run, but a very, very, hard road to tow in the short run. And I think that'll continue over time, that it will be more and more lucrative to have been a Core dev, to have contributed to this thing and to be known.
But I think that Bitcoin exists on the charity of the people that were willing to basically sacrifice an immense amount of time to build this thing, very smart people who could have done other things. And I think they've been rewarded by the price increases and such, but I think that they deserve a lot more than that. This world-changing technology, I think, is one of those things that just, I think we as a community just can't give enough to them to really help them understand what they've done for us. And not just that, I mean the world. I think Bitcoin has a potential to really be a world-changing tech.
Peter McCormack: Is it not already?
Junseth: No, it hasn't done anything. It just sits here, it's like a dead rat. All we're doing right now, we are the beta testers of Bitcoin. We're the ones putting liquidity on it, we're moving it around, we're giving it a quick test, we're making sure that everything works. Bitcoin's in the garage and we're the mechanics and we're revving it, that's what we're trying to do. It's not doing anything much yet. I don't find El Salvador to be that significant. I don't think that the changes there are necessarily because of Bitcoin. They're because Bukele is willing to be a dictator for a little while and we'll see if he cedes power, or if he becomes Hitler; he has two choices here, so we'll see what happens! But I don't think that's because of Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin could be a cool part of that story, but I think that he could have done what he's done so far without Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, no, I don't disagree with that.
Danny Knowles: So what would have to happen for you to think Bitcoin had done something for the world?
Junseth: I think what will happen, and this is what I think in my mind happens over time, I think that you have these global currencies that are semi-stable, and yet some are very volatile. And I think what Bitcoin will do is as it grows, as more people come here, as more people understand what they're looking at, I think Bitcoin becomes more and more stable, less and less volatile. And if you were to have a chart of currencies that Bitcoin is more volatile than, or less volatile than, I think Bitcoin starts to move up that chart. And then I think once it's like in the top ten, top nine, top eight, top seven, top six, I think the whole world starts to look at it and say, "I could hold US dollars, or I could hold this other thing which is very stable and actually is easier to transact in", because at that point, I mean it's so big. But that's a long way off. But I think that that's what happens.
I think the way that Bitcoin consumes the world is through stability and if that's the case, I think that'll just be really interesting for all of us to watch. I think that is the process of monetisation it's the process of stabilisation for Bitcoin. And in that way, I think all of a sudden you have Venezuelans looking at it. Like right now, Venezuelans are looking at Bitcoin and the US dollar and they're picking Herbalife. They're exporting their value through things like Herbalife, which is really an interesting...
What's amazing to me about impoverished people in other countries is that they find these incredible solutions to export cash. And Bitcoin is obviously the best way if you can get the Bitcoin, and they can't, a lot of people can't. And I think in a lot of these countries, like I think in Venezuela, Dash and others really had what I would say amounted to marketing teams going down there and really pushing that stuff. And I think the collapse of a lot of those projects, or the price and the not recovering of those projects, really left a foul taste in a lot of those people's mouths.
So, I think Bitcoin has to kind of deal with the fact that there's just a lot of bad juju in these places about crypto generally, and we'll just have to let that soften over time. But that's been the problem with shitcoins. Shitcoins have really hurt the advancement of Bitcoin. I'm not really bothered by it, because I think slow growth is the best way for this to happen.
Peter McCormack: Definitely. I can make an argument that they have helped in that a wider crypto industry has brought a lot more people in. You can make both arguments. I mean, I could be wrong.
Junseth: I think the wider crypto industry is nothing but scams.
Peter McCormack: Oh, no, of course.
Junseth: Yeah, so I don't care that they're here. Those things are negative value to us. They inure to us no value other than to keep the price down so we can buy more. That's it. So I guess in that way, it's positive. But all of the value in these other chains, all of the value in these businesses and everything else surrounding crypto generally, it's non-existent, it's going to disappear. And I guess it inures to our benefit in that all of that value eventually flows back into our project, the one that we like. But it just takes so long.
What's been interesting to me is, the longer I'm here, the more I see everyone's here just to get rich, which doesn't bother me, I'm not really bothered by that incentive. But it is amazing how many people are willing to lay out and gamble. Like during the last bull market, I was hearing in Clubhouse and other places, these people would go on Clubhouse and say like, "I've done my research, I've looked at everything, you do your research, but I've done mine. And SafeMoon is the greatest coin ever created".
Peter McCormack: "They have legitimate use cases".
Junseth: "This one has legitimate use cases. It has an e-commerce store", or whatever the case is. And then I hear the recaps of, like, old scams. I hear basically people telling me that this coin is everything and here's why, and then they'll walk me through it and I'm like, "That's just OneCoin". You know, we've already done that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean look, I always try and be open-minded, but what became very clear early on was that I actually use Bitcoin, like I use it, and so it has a use case, and I didn't use any of these other things. I can see some arguments for Monero, the data's out there on dark markets, it's definitely being used more than Bitcoin, and I think the reason is, it's easier to stay anonymous than it is with Bitcoin, and I know that.
Junseth: I don't think so. The anonymity set isn't big enough, they just don't know that. I think fundamentally what people don't realise is that these people who are using these chains for business, even drug dealers, they're not bitcoiners in the sense that they know what's going on. They're not here. They need this, they need alternative money, but they don't know the politics of Bitcoin. They believe the rhetoric of these other coins. Monero's anonymity set isn't big enough to keep you private. Z.cash requires a huge amount of RAM. It doesn't keep you private because nobody uses the anonymity set.
So, this is fundamentally the thing with Bitcoin is that Bitcoin's anonymity set, I mean, you'll get more anonymity in Bitcoin if you're doing these Wasabi Wallets and stuff, you'll have more anonymity.
Peter McCormack: Sure, but for some people, it's a big jump. I don't know the facts of the anonymity set and whether it's easy to bust people, I don't know that. All I know is that people see that as more private and easier to gain privacy from when they're using it.
Junseth: Correct. But I'm just saying that's a temporary belief, because the anonymity set is not big. Think about it this way. In Bitcoin, all of the randomness has to come from within the chain itself. And the randomness is built on top of the number of users.
Peter McCormack: But temporary solutions are fine. The portable CD player was a temporary solution.
Junseth: Absolutely. Let people use Monero in those dark net markets, it's fine. Monero's always been kind of an experiment. We've always liked, like even on Bitcoin Uncensored, we'd bring like Fluffypony on. We always like Fluffypony, some people hate him, they think he's a scammer. I've always found him to be very genuine. Riccardo Spagni is a wonderful guy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. But also, we had a conversation the other day, was it Matt Corallo?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: He talked about Litecoin, he said, "Look, there's times when it's really expensive to send money on Bitcoin, and you could be on an exchange, you could swap some for some Litecoin and send it. It's cheaper and easier", and I can't argue against that. If somebody wants to do that, good for them. I have no issue with that.
Junseth: Well, in the short run, these things aren't going to zero.
Peter McCormack: No.
Junseth: So, you can do that safely in the short run. It is a game of hot potato, though.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course, and then you have the pushing of dollars around the world on TRON, or whatever platform, or Ethereum. I'm saying there are temporary use cases. I'm with you long term, it all trends to zero, Bitcoin wins, but I'm not such a maximalist that I'm going to deny somebody the truth of the solution some of these provide.
Junseth: I don't critique people for using things temporarily. Like I said, I don't think that any of this stuff goes to zero tomorrow.
Peter McCormack: No.
Junseth: But the thing is, you never know when the tomorrow that brings them to zero comes, right? So it could be tomorrow, it could be 20 years from now, it could be a slow, painful death, it could be a quick, no-one-saw-it-coming death, you never know. And that to me is the reality of shitcoins, is you are dealing with a hot potato and that hot potato might be hot for 20 years, and it might be hot for two more days.
Peter McCormack: What do you make of Ordinals?
Junseth: I like them, I think it's funny. I talked to Pete Rizzo about this, and he critiqued my perspective on it. So, Pete and I have two fundamentally different views on Bitcoin. He thinks that Bitcoin has to grow fast; I don't.
Peter McCormack: We had that conversation the other day, didn't we?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think it has to grow right.
Junseth: I think it has to grow slowly. Otherwise, I think if it grows fast, the countries get sick and they develop a case of the shooties. So I'd rather not have that happen. And I think that that's more likely if something like Bitcoin grows fast. I'm a fan of the slow ascent for Bitcoin, I'm very okay with that. I don't like the shooties. I don't think anyone should get them, so I want to do everything I can to avoid that. And I think he thinks that if it doesn't grow fast, it doesn't work, because then there's a big attack vector, I'm not sure why. And he critiqued my last appearance on the show with regard to Ordinals as not praising them, because he thinks that there's a way to onboard thousands or millions or hundreds of thousands, I don't know even know how many, of new users into Bitcoin with this narrative that anything you can do on these other chains, you can do on Bitcoin.
I don't think he's wrong, I think that there is that opportunity. I don't think that bitcoiners should be condemning Ordinals. I think they should make it easy for people to onboard from any of these stupid projects to anything else. And when I say I like them, I like the inscription portion. I think that the accounting portion is a bit scummy, I think it's mainly just for pumping. There's nothing that actually ties a satoshi, apart from the accounting system, to the image that's in the blockchain. That image once there belongs to everybody, anyone can look at it and access it. So, I think that that's a really kind of --
Peter McCormack: But you don't own it.
Junseth: Yeah, but no one does. If you can put a 3D-printed gun blueprint on Bitcoin and only one person owns it because they own the Ordinal, that doesn't prevent the rest of the world from downloading it and then printing it, you know what I mean? It's so obtuse. And I've always thought this about these NFTs in general. The whole thing is pretty obtuse, but I think it's funny. I enjoy it, I like the narrative, I like the irreverence, all of that stuff I like a lot. I like the fact that the Ordinals thing developed without permission. That's, I think, the most interesting part about Ordinals, is that there was no one, like Casey, the guy who developed it, didn't ask anybody. He didn't say, "Can I please inscribe things on Bitcoin?" He just built it. And I think that that is really the promise of what we've done here, is that anyone can build anything that is feasible on the chain.
Peter McCormack: That means Bitcoin is so much more than just money now.
Junseth: I don't know if it means it's much more than money. The question is whether, well like with Ordinals, I think that if Bitcoin is used maximally as money, a lot of the use cases for Ordinals gets priced out. You no longer are going to be able to afford to put Pepes on the chain unless you really, really want to. But what you might end up doing is, there might be a banned book, there might be banned gun blueprints or something like that. There's things that you could put on the chain that would otherwise not be allowed, or that would otherwise not be easy to get. Maybe somebody will develop an anchor link type protocol where you can go get a torrent that uses the chain as seeding something, I don't know. There's all sorts of cool things, I think, that can be done here, but I think primarily Bitcoin is money.
But this emphasises what blockchains are for. Blockchains are for uncensorable transactions, and sometimes uncensorable content, if that's what you need. And there's a number of use cases for uncensorable content. They're de minimis, but they're important, right? Whenever we see them, we know them.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I was indifferent to them to begin with, didn't care either way, and I've recognised that some people are very anti them, dislike them, hate them, and there's a lot of people who are very pro them, people who --
Junseth: But nothing's changed. You've always been able to embed content on Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Junseth: It's just the cost, the prices, someone figured out how to do it cheap, that's it!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I just find it interesting. My indifference is changed. From what I've heard it's, well, I haven't found a miner who dislikes them.
Junseth: Miners love them.
Peter McCormack: Miners love them. But you know what, nobody's broke the rules.
Junseth: My favourite miner, Iris Energy, especially! No, they're sponsoring, aren't they?
Peter McCormack: Yeah!
Junseth: But I think miners, I heard someone the other day say that they wouldn't be surprised if the next reporting for miners are going to be unexpectedly high and that analysts are going to have no understanding of why, because these miners are just raking it in right now with these transaction fees. And I don't know how long the fervour lasts. I don't think this is a good permanent solution.
Peter McCormack: Of course not.
Junseth: Once the Pepes and these people who have these projects kind of go away, then it just kind of disappears. But I do think it's interesting that at least temporarily miners are very happy, because they get the extra fees for this little pet project.
Peter McCormack: I've been thinking of doing my own Ordinals.
Junseth: You should do you should do your own Ordinals. I mean at the very least, Peter, I think everyone should try all of these things, see how they're done. Because in my experience, if you're playing with things like Counterparty, if you're playing with Ordinals, if you try -- and I think Mike In Space is trying to launch Bitcoin stamps.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, what's that all about? I keep seeing him talk about it.
Junseth: I haven't really looked, but I'm guessing it's just Ordinals with a different accounting system, BRC-20. I think everyone should try them, because then what you do when you try them is you learn a lot about Bitcoin and how it works. And I think that's really important, because I think that most people are very ignorant about how the chain works. They don't understand when someone says you could run a protocol on it, exactly what that means. Counterparty's a protocol completely written on top of a blockchain, that's a really weird proposition. But the idea is like, you could have nobody running a Counterparty node, zero people, and then in 100 years if you downloaded counterparty and booted it back up, you would be able to look at all the transactions that occurred, and if you had a wallet, you would be able to look at it and you'd still have all of the things in your wallet.
So, there's been other things that people have done, and like understanding Counterparty helps you understand other things. So, for example, a few years ago there was a hacker that was using the chain to tell his botnet, if a server was taken down, where to redirect themselves to the new server.
Peter McCormack: Do you know how botnets work?
Junseth: A little bit. They're viruses, they propagate on websites or wherever it is that you're going. And at least in the case of that botnet, they were checking back with the server to implement code or to do things on a certain date.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. I want to ask you about Jason Lowery. I had him on, did an interview with him recently, and it didn't go down very well with those who chose to listen to it and watch it on YouTube. It was probably our most criticised show ever.
Junseth: Really?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I'm intrigued by that, because they were very critical, very, very critical of me, of Danny.
Junseth: Just for having him on?
Peter McCormack: No, actually for us not -- I challenge everyone's thesis. I get everyone to explain things as simply as possible and tell people I disagree with them, and a lot of people really like his thesis and they're really behind it. And if you look through the comments, it's a lot of, "You poorly prepared for this, it was a rubbish interview, the Breedlove one was better, you don't understand".
Junseth: The Breedlove one was better! I like that; the greatest insult you could give somebody!
Peter McCormack: No, I'm really interested in the social side of this. I can't tell if me and Danny have completely missed the mark, missed the point with this, or whether -- he admitted in the interview he ran a kind of social media blocking campaign to create awareness of him and his book that he said worked. So I can't work out if he's created an echo chamber and then people just think he's brilliant and cannot handle the idea that someone disagrees or doesn't understand it, but the comments were particularly -- they're very different, aren't they?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, very different. And a lot of them, I think it's probably my highest commented show.
Junseth: Really?
Danny Knowles: Up there at least.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the ratio of comments to views, I'm going to guess it's top ten, probably top five.
Junseth: You've been ratioed.
Danny Knowles: What Pete's trying to say is he thinks he's running bots.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm not so sure now.
Junseth: I gathered!
Peter McCormack: Well, we know there's definitely a bot, because we received one comment after two seconds after publishing with #Softwar. So, there's clearly a bot exists. But it's not necessarily him, it could be somebody else. I'm not 100% convinced they are bots commenting.
Junseth: We've learned with XRP though that people can act a lot like bots.
Peter McCormack: True.
Junseth: I mean, it would require a deep analysis to figure out if that's what's going on. The Lowery thesis is really interesting to me, because I don't understand what he's saying that's new in anything that he says that's important. And I don't understand a lot of the stuff that he's saying that is new. I don't understand about what of it is interesting.
Peter McCormack: You see this is the point. The conclusion I came to with the interview, and I thought I had a great insight in it, in that my conclusion was by the time we finish interviews, I consider myself just a very normal bloke and I have a way of explaining Bitcoin to my mates down the pub. And Alex Gladstein works in the Human Rights Foundation and works with activists, and he has a way of explaining Bitcoin to them. And Jason Lowery is a military guy, and he has a way of explaining Bitcoin to military people, but we're all saying exactly the same thing. We're just saying it in the language of the circles we mix in, which is fine, but that was my conclusion. And the point being is that there's all this criticism online, it's quite harsh and full-on and brutal; but then everybody I've spoke to outside of it, yourself and other people, they've said, "There's nothing new there. He's just telling people in his language".
Junseth: Yeah. And I think I think you've got a pretty broad perspective on Bitcoin that you've developed over the years talking to all these people. I've tried to develop as broad a perspective as I can on what we're looking at. As far as Bitcoin and Lowery's position, I mean I think that Bitcoin as a sort of weapon is not unfathomable, right? I think that we know that North Korea is probably trying to get as much Bitcoin as they can, they're doing hacks, they're probably mining it themselves. I think the proper response from other states that realise that is probably to start mining Bitcoin themselves; that's probably what needs to happen. I think there's been rumours that Venezuela's been stealing miners from Bitcoin miners.
Peter McCormack: For years.
Junseth: And then they regularly call the miner up and ask them to help them set up the miners! So there's been discussions of that. So, if Venezuela, if North Korea are mining Bitcoin, it's time to think about the fact that maybe nation states need to be getting into this and preventing them from amassing, becoming the Spanish Armada with immense amounts of gold. I guess a really bad thing for the world would be a very wealthy North Korea, it would be a terrible idea. So, I think that part of -- I don't think he says that specifically, but I think Bitcoin as like a state, the places where the state needs to touch Bitcoin, I think that's an important discussion to be had.
It's interesting too, because in the 1990s in the United States, we talked a lot about this back in the day on Bitcoin Uncensored, they classified cryptography as munitions; you weren't allowed to export it. So, people would wear these shirts through TSA, I guess not TSA, I guess they wouldn't really have that, but they'd wear shirts to the airport that had cryptographic signatures on it as kind of an F-you to the state. And I think that there are these interesting questions. Like, if there was a time if cryptography was viewed as munitions, like America, do we have a Second Amendment right to hold Bitcoin, because maybe we do, I don't know! I think these are all questions that lawyers can play with.
I've learned with lawyers, every time I ask a question, they tell me I'm an idiot and that I don't understand law. But to me those are really interesting kinds of questions, if the state could classify it as munitions, why don't I have a Second Amendment right to have it?
Danny Knowles: But that went then in court and was classified a First Amendment right, wasn't it?
Junseth: I think it's both, to be honest. If cryptography is munitions, then I'm allowed to have it, I have a Second Amendment right to it.
Danny Knowles: But wasn't the law changed that cryptography was viewed as a First Amendment right?
Junseth: Yeah, I think that was exactly what closed down the munitions argument.
Danny Knowles: And the reason it was munitions is because it was deemed as military-grade tech. So, when they said that the public could have access to this, it went through the First Amendment.
Junseth: Correct.
Danny Knowles: So, have we not had that battle?
Junseth: Well, that's fine with me. I mean, you are probably correct on the legal side. If you were a lawyer, you probably would write that up and defeat my Second Amendment argument. But for me, it's just like playing with ideas. I like the idea that you might have a Second Amendment right to Bitcoin, it's a funny idea. But yeah, I think that fundamentally, money is speech. I think that the courts have decided that in the US and we have freedom to it. And the state does a lot of regulation of that speech, which it's not supposed to do. And I think that that's, over time, going to have to be looked at and figure out what the limits of regulating the speech are; because, honestly, it's our money. We should be able to do with it as we want.
Peter McCormack: Leave our fucking money alone.
Junseth: Leave the fucking money alone, exactly.
Peter McCormack: Stop fucking with us.
Junseth: But that's the thing. I think this year's been a really interesting year, because you look at what like the United States did with Russia, removing them from the global payment system. Money has always sort of been a utility and it's always remained neutral. Money has always been a neutral commodity. If you have a US dollar, it's sort of a bearer asset. Your access to the global banking infrastructure really is not supposed to be shut-off-able. We always knew it was, but it's kind of been sort of a tacit agreement that we just wouldn't do it.
I think the state actions in this last year have shown, like I get it, maybe Russia is an enemy, maybe we don't want them existing, all these sorts of caveats. But I think the moment that the United States and the rest of the countries did this action, money became non-neutral. And I think that's a big step in the development of Bitcoin. And I don't think they know it yet, but I think that's a big step, because I think if other nations look at that and say, "Well, if we are deemed an enemy of the United States, or if we're deemed an enemy of enough of the European nations, then we can be cut off from the global financial system", I think the ending of the neutrality of money is in some ways the beginning of like, Bitcoin as the alternative to it.
Peter McCormack: I think that's fair. Is it again another insurance?
Junseth: Yeah, I mean the thing is you need some insurance, everyone has it, right? If you're smart, you have a little food. You don't necessarily need 12 months of food, but maybe two, three weeks, get some rice, some beans. Everyone's got their savings, some people have their gold stash, and there's a point where if the insurance itself -- what's interesting in the case of money is there's the possibility that the insurance itself becomes the money, and that's a really weird proposition. That's what gold bugs have always been waiting for, is that the gold itself becomes the money. And it did for a while, but then it stopped being the money, and many of them still stash it, hoping that it will be the money again someday.
I think that's kind of the bet that bitcoiners are making, is that the insurance itself in a world catastrophe, or where money is so not neutral that other countries just abandon it, or that the CBDCs become elements of total control, or that central banks take over and destroy the money, whatever the case is, that Bitcoin itself becomes the vehicle of insuring that you are standing athwart global collapse. The vehicle itself becomes money. And I think that's a really interesting possibility. And that's why we're here, in some sense, or that's part of the reason we're here.
Peter McCormack: I kind of feel like that's such a profound ending, I want to end! Do what I mean? It's just such a profound ending, it's like, where do you take that?
Junseth: Yeah, I think that you're right. I think that to me, I think that that is the most, for me, the most salient possibility, the most important possibility of where Bitcoin could go. And I think if we just, as bitcoiners, as we're sitting here kind of watching where the world is, I think the possibility of it becomes distinctly possible. It's more possible today where money has de-neutralised more than it's ever been, and I think that's really, for me, an exhilarating opportunity for Bitcoin, but also a very scary place for, I think, the world.
Peter McCormack: All right, do you want to sing us out?
Junseth: Sure, let's do it!
Peter McCormack: We've not got a second song lined up.
Junseth: You should do the first one.
Peter McCormack: Just go, go acapella.
Junseth: Oh, yeah?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, go on. You got it in you?
Junseth: I don't have any acapella songs, what should I do?
Danny Knowles: I don't know any of the songs you sing, to be honest.
Junseth: A little Metallica?
Peter McCormack: Hit him up.
Junseth: "This age --", what is it?
Peter McCormack: I'm better on my Guns N' Roses.
Junseth: I was raised on a Christian commune and I didn't know any music from any of these bands until I got to college.
Peter McCormack: You didn't get Christian rock?
Junseth: I was allowed to listen to P.O.D. when I was older, but I got like DC Talk, Newsboys, they have a rock song about cereal.
[Junseth singing]
Peter McCormack: Where did you grow up?! All right, Junseth, I love you, brother.
